Bad Penny
by ByTheMatchbook
Summary: Old friends share a drink, more or less. "He was always quite clever, but getting up and leaving now would just make him look like a coward, and saying hello would be too weird, so his problem goes unsolved. Instead, they sit there in silence, picking up the dynamic they'd left off on when school ended a year and a half ago."


**Lily and Snape in a bar a year and a half out of Hogwarts, and thoroughly entrenched on opposite sides of a growing war. This was just something I knocked out quick, so it's really rambly. Warning for alcohol and lots of swearing!**

There's this vague sense of shock that passes over her when she notices who just sat down at the bar a few stools down from her, but she's had four shots too many and decides that she really doesn't give a shit.

In fact, it's kind of funny to meet his eyes and watch them widen in horror as he realizes his mistake and tries to come up with a solution. He was always quite clever, but getting up and leaving now would just make him look like a coward, and saying hello would be too weird, so his problem goes unsolved. Instead, they sit there in silence, picking up the dynamic they'd left off on when school ended a year and a half ago.

She laughs ruefully into her shot glass before tipping it back. She barely feels it going down, which means that it's probably time to ask the barkeep to call someone. But she won't do that just yet. She has some questions she needs answered.

"All right…" she begins her question before she realizes that she doesn't know what to call him. Sev seems too familiar, Snape too harsh, and Severus too formal. "…Severus?" It's the best option of the three.

He doesn't even look at her, just keeps his eyes dead ahead as the bar tender pours him a tall glass of clear liquid.

_Prick_, she thinks.

"You're really just going to ignore me?"

In response, he knocks back the liquid in his glass in one and motions for it to be refilled.

"Well that's very fucking mature," she says. She supposes she should be angry, but she feels indifferent. It's what she expected, more or less. It's what she knew. He doesn't actually give a shit.

"I'm fine, thanks for asking" she goes on, as though he responded to her initial question, "Mum's great. Dad's great. Tuney's a bit of a bint, but that's nothing new." She expects his lips to at least quirk up at that, but his face is so still it could've been carved from stone.

She bets she looks a right fucking state. Her hair half pinned up, the rest falling out in wild curls around her face, her jeans torn, a half-healed scorch mark on her neck…she wonders if he knows the man who put it there.

Probably. Definitely probably.

Though the sleeve of his jacket is currently covering his left forearm, she has no misgivings about what lies beneath there. And if it doesn't yet, it soon will.

"Ran into your friend Avery," she says. He still doesn't really react, merely taking another swallow from the glass.

"Not today, that is…not sure which friend of yours I ran into today, to tell you the truth, but I ran into Avery earlier this month."

And hopefully put him in the sodding hospital, cunting fucker.

The Avery thing had been interesting. It'd been her first real fight since joining the Order, though she'd certainly had her fair share of duels before. People don't really like a mouthy muggleborn, as it turns out, whether she's an active part of the resistance or not. The Avery thing had been so surreal, though. He hadn't been some arse hurling drunken slurs on a street corner, he'd been a tall, robed, masked figure, looming over her like something straight out of her nightmares.

It had thrown her through a fucking loop, it had, 'til she'd been able to get the mask off—that was the first thing Moody'd told them all; without the masks, the Death Eaters are just people. And it was easy enough to roll your eyes at that and say "yeah of course they're just fucking people," but there's a big difference between facing down a masked murderer and facing down the little shite you went to school with who blew up his own cauldron trying to brew essence of fucking murtlap.

That had been her mistake today. She hadn't gotten the mask off. So she'd needed a trip to Saint Mungo's to get the giant burn across her neck and chest healed to the ugly red scorch mark it now was. They'd given her some sort of serum for it that she was supposed to rub on before bed every night this week, but she was half-considering tossing it. The scar looked sort of wicked.

She hadn't really wanted to go straight to James's then. James, who'd want to know _who_ and _where_ and _why_ and _how_, and who'd look at her with that imagined sort of sympathy like "_I get it, I know how you feel_," when he really fucking didn't. He knew how it felt to be on the losing end of a duel with a Death Eater sure, but he didn't and could never understand how it felt to look through the eyeholes in that mask to the pure hatred that lied just beneath. To know that the person you were fighting against (and losing against) really, _really_ fucking wanted you dead just for existing.

It was simultaneously terrifying and infuriating and there was nothing she could do except just deal with it and move on. Apparate out of the fight you're losing, because they can throw unforgivables while you're legally prohibited from doing the same. Get the burn treated, report to Moody and tell him you've fucked up, then head to a bar and drink until you can't remember why you started drinking in the first place.

She'd only apparated here because it'd been the first pub to come to mind where she thought she wouldn't run into anyone. After all, who the fuck went to Spinner's End by choice, let alone to get pissed?

And of all fucking people. The one person who had reason to hate this place beyond the shitty bars and shitty people.

But there he was, silently drinking two bar stools down from her. Did it count as sharing a drink if he still wasn't going to acknowledge her?

"Fuck you too, then, Sev."

It slipped out. Not the "fuck you" bit, but the Sev bit. _Sev_. Just another thing that he really wasn't anymore. The image in her mind that the name Sev brought about was the skinny little boy with long, uncombed hair, wearing a sweater three sizes too big and shorts in the middle of the winter.

It fucking hurt.

The use of his old nickname finally got his attention. His eyes met hers once more and then slipped down, focusing on her left hand that was resting on the countertop, zoned in on the thin silver band around the finger closest to her pinky.

She gets up and leaves before he can say anything, because she knows he'll just be upset and she knows she doesn't owe him anything; because she's sitting there with scorch marks on her neck and a ring on her finger that she's not ready to accept while he covers up a skull and a snake on his arm that means that she can never, ever call him Sev again.

It fucking hurts.

The air outside is cold and she doesn't have a jacket, but it helps clear her head enough that she can walk in a (mostly) straight line. She lights a fag and inhales as she goes, blowing tendrils of smoke up at the cloudy sky. She'll send for James to come get her in a moment, because honestly she doesn't think she's sober enough for any form of apparition other than side-along, but for now she waits, reveling in her solitude. The scorch marks on her neck are still stinging, but she sort of likes it that way.


End file.
